What Causes Dry Lips?
Painful, flaky, dry lips – we’ve all been there, but none of us want to revisit that rough, uncomfortable feeling. Understanding what causes dry lips is an essential step towards healing them. And there’s good news: the solution for dry lips is simpler than you think.
While your skincare routine likely includes a facial moisturizer, the skin on your lips is different. Like the undereye area, it’s particularly susceptible to dryness and needs some extra TLC. But despite lips’ tendency to dry out, many people wait until their pout is peeling before applying a moisturizing lip balm.
Consider this your call-to-action to make lip care part of your skincare routine. We’ll explain how the skin on your lips is different, why your lips may feel dry, and how to prevent and heal dry lips using science-backed skincare.
Why Are My Lips So Dry?
While dry lips can be caused by any number of stressors, your lips are particularly susceptible to dryness due to the unique structure of their skin.
Unlike the skin on the rest of your face, your lips don’t have oil glands, which means your lips can’t keep themselves moisturized.
The skin all over your body relies on its natural oils --- or sebum – to lock hydration into the skin and keep it healthy. While there are indeed oil glands around the edges of the lips, the lip skin itself doesn’t have oil glands, making this area susceptible to dehydration and leading to dry, chapped, peeling lips.
4 Common Causes of Dry Lips
The lack of naturally-occurring protective oils on your skin means that your lips are especially vulnerable to stressors in the environment or within your body. These may include:
Sun exposure – UV exposure dehydrates skin all over your body by compromising your moisture barrier. Without a natural protective layer of moisture, lips are particularly vulnerable. Cold or dry weather – Dry air literally sucks the hydration out of your lips in a process known as trans epidermal water loss (TEWL) Frequently licking your lips – Enzymes in your saliva can break down the skin on your lips. In addition, the constant wet-dry cycle further breaks down the skin barrier and causes dry lips Medication – Prescription medicines can also cause dry lips. Perhaps most famously, oral isotretonin prescribed for acne can lead to chapped lips.
How to Heal Dry Lips
The best solution for dry lips is to keep them coated day and night with hydrating ingredients that replenish moisture and lock it into your parched pout.
Our new Pro-Peptide Lip Perfector delivers intense, 24-hour moisture to deeply hydrate and support skin’s moisture barrier. Formulated with mega-hydrating micro-encapsulated hyaluronic acid and barrier-boosting sugarcane squalane, this groundbreaking innovation plumps and smooths the look of lips instantly and over time.
Pro-Peptide Lip Perfector is available in clear and two sheer shades to enhance lips’ natural color, making it even easier to wear day and night for deeply nourished, healthy, hydrated lips.
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As a lifestyle writer and journalist, I love sharing my passion for ocean conservation and obsession with clean beauty. I’ve tried almost every trend and ingredient, and Biossance’s science-backed formulas are the only ones that consistently calm my reactive skin and make it smoother, clearer, and healthier. I’m so excited to be on this journey of skincare innovation with Biossance, and to share it with you!
